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“She told him?” Sean asked.

“She did, and he told everyone. He expected them to just kick him out, but they didn’t. Personally, I wish they had. Instead, his mom canceled his flight back to New York. She’s demanding that he speak to someone in the church about some kind of counseling. He has his phone, but she won’t let him use her car, and they live in the middle of nowhere. He can’t get more than a few minutes alone to text. He can’t even call me because there’s always someone listening. She’s making him sleep in the living room because she doesn’t want him sharing a room with his little brother. It’s really fucked up.”

“I can buy him a plane ticket. Just tell me what day.” Sean reached for his laptop on the coffee table. “He’ll need a ride to the airport, right? If you give me the address, I can figure something out. There has to be a car service.”

“Sean, it’s not that simple,” Aleksandra said instead.

“I know.” Sean sighed. “But I can’t do anything else, and I don’t think he’d want me to fly there. So I can fly him back tomorrow. I don’t care how much it costs. Unless he wants me to fly there. I can fly there.”

“Wow. Okay, I appreciate the response that you’ll do anything. I do,” Aleksandra said. “But it’s not just that. If he leaves, they’re never going to let him come back.”

“He wants to stay?” Sean’s chest physically hurt as he said it.

“Sean, I don’t think he knows what to do. It’s only been a couple days, and he’s upset, but you need to let him decide to come back on his own.” Aleksandra paused, but Sean could tell she had more to say. “Look, if you beg him to come back, he might, but then you’ll always be the guy who made him leave his family. I can’t make you listen to me, but I really think if you just let him know you’re there for him while he figures things out, it’ll be better.”

“Can I text him? Does he want to talk to me, at least?” Sean wasn’t sure what he’d do if she said no.

“You can. He does want to talk to you. He just kind of has to sneak around to text without them looking over his shoulder, and he can’t really talk without someone listening, so he thought it would be easier if I called than if you had to find out with sporadic texts over two days like I did. He’s still Jaime, and he’s trying to protect you even when you don’t want him to. He’s not used to letting people take care of him, even me, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try.”

“I’ll try.”

“If you want to stay up late, that’s your best chance to text him. That’s what I did last night. Eventually his family will go to sleep, so tell him to text you when they do, and he’ll stay up. His mom is a light sleeper, so he can’t talk—or that’s what he says. I think they’ve just got him so paranoid at this point that it’s not worth it fighting with him about it. It’s like they’re breaking him down by never leaving him alone and making him sleep in the living room. So now he just doesn’t want them to try to take his phone when they figure out he’s texting. He pays for it, so they can’t, really, but it’s easier on him if he doesn’t have to fight about anything else. But he’ll text you after they go to sleep if you want.”

“Thanks.”

“Thanks for not just giving up on him. Call me if you need to. I have to go to work tonight, but I’m keeping my phone close in case things get worse and he needs me.”

Sean stared at his phone after she hung up. When Travis and Alana didn’t ask questions right away, he realized how quiet they’d been during the whole call.

“You heard all that, didn’t you?”

“You keep your phone volume really high,” Alana said.

“I’m stupid,” Sean said when neither of them added anything.

“What?” Travis asked.

“I’m stupid. You were right when you met me and you said I was stupid and spoiled and I didn’t know anything about the real world. I haven’t gotten any better. I told him everything would be fine, and now I ruined his life, and I didn’t even think about it.”

“Sean, no,” Travis said. “I’m not going to argue that maybe you should have thought about some of the consequences before, but that’s pointless. Either way, you didn’t make him gay, and that’s their problem, not you. They don’t even know you. This was probably going to happen eventually, because with you or not, he’s still gay.”

“I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know how to take care of people. I flew you all the way back here because I couldn’t handle this. I can’t do that for him, and I don’t know what else to do.”

“You’ll figure it out. As much as I hate to remind you, you’re pretty much the only person who took care of me when I got injured and had surgery. You take care of people just fine when you have to. This is just a different thing to figure out.”

“And he’s probably easier than Travis,” Alana added. “He’s probably not going to barricade himself in his room with twenty cans of ravioli and refuse to shower for eight days.”

“There were painkillers involved in that event,” Travis said before she could add anything else. “The point is that you can handle this. Just let him know you’re here when he needs you, and you’ll help him however he wants you to help him. Aleksandra’s right. You need to let him decide on his own to come back. Just make sure he knows you’ll be here when he does.”

“That doesn’t feel like doing anything,” Sean said.

“I know,” Travis said. “Look, I haven’t done a damn thing, and you paid to fly me back here anyway. Does it help just that I’m here?”

Sean nodded and looked back down at his phone.

“Then just knowing you’re there for him will help, even if you can’t physically be there.”

Sean opened his text conversation with Jaime.

I talked to Aleksandra. I’ll stay up as late as you need me to if you want to text me. I’m here for whatever you need.

It was an hour before he got a single text back that Jaime would text him again when he could, and then nothing for hours. Alana eventually went to sleep in his bed after Travis argued that one of them should sleep. A little after two, his phone finally vibrated.

Sorry. I know it’s even later in New York. Enrique stayed late and I couldn’t get him to go home. And I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you everything myself. I just couldn’t.

It’s okay. I understand why. Don’t worry about me. Can I do anything?

Sean could feel Travis watching him from where he was washing out the coffee pot. He’d made Sean drink tea instead, claiming he couldn’t handle Sean being any more jittery than he already was.

Thanks. There’s not really anything anyone can do. Lupe actually texted to say she’s sorry. She didn’t think he’d tell everyone. Her mom won’t let her talk to me now. My mom says she’s a bad influence and her mom says I am.

Sean was still trying to figure out how to answer him when another text came through.

She was supposed to fly back with me tomorrow, but I’m not sure if her mom is letting her go back. Does Travis know anyone at Purchase who can find out? Lexi doesn’t want to stalk her dorm and I don’t know any of her friends.

“He wants to know if you can find out if Lupe is back in New York tomorrow,” Sean said. “I don’t know why he cares. I really want to tell him to stop caring what happens to her.”

“If you thought that was the right thing to do, you wouldn’t be saying that to me instead of him. I have Michael’s number. They’re in the same dorm, so he can probably find out. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

Travis says he can probably find out from Michael tomorrow.

Thanks. I just don’t want them to make her drop out and transfer somewhere here because of me.

“You shouldn’t tell me what dorm she’s in if I ask,” Sean said aloud as he typed back.

It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything to her.

If it wasn’t for me, my mom wouldn’t be fighting with her sister. Lupe wouldn’t be worried she’ll never join Steph’s company. And I think you probably flew home because you fought with your family about me. You didn’t have to. I’m sorry.

Sean started to type a response, but nothing felt like enough. Instead, he caught Travis’s eye and nodded toward Travis’s room.

“I’ll be awake if you need something. If you don’t, let me know so I can go to sleep,” Travis said before leaving to give him some privacy.

Aleksandra said you couldn’t talk, but you called her and she talked to you. Can you do that? I’ll talk and then we can hang up and you can text me back. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

It was only a few seconds before his phone rang.

“Hey. If you want to say something, you can just hang up and text me whenever you want, and then if you want to call me back after I read it, we can do that too. It’s okay that you can’t talk, but I wish I could hear your voice, so I figured maybe you’d want to hear mine.

“Please don’t worry about me and my mom. It’s nothing. I promise. I know her. She’ll probably call me tomorrow and we’ll talk about it, and it’ll be fine. She didn’t like it when I turned down San Francisco Ballet and moved to New York, and she didn’t like it when I moved in with Travis, and she’s gotten over all that. So really, don’t worry about me at all. I’m fine. Travis is here. Alana is trying to move into my room. So just let me worry about you. I know I don’t really get what you’re going through, but I’m trying.

“I just want you to know I’m here. If you want to text me. If you want to call me and listen to me talk.”

Sean could hear Jaime breathing on the other end of the line when he paused. He knew what he needed to say next, but there was still part of him that had to fight with himself to say it. As much as he knew Aleksandra was right, he could admit to himself that he’d still rather beg Jaime to come back to him.

“And I want you to know that as much as I want you to come back, you can take whatever time you need, and I’ll be here. If you want to come back, we can figure that out, but I’ll be here until then.”

He could hear Jaime breathing for a few seconds, and then there was a beep in his ear from Jaime hitting a key. When Sean pulled the phone away, he saw that Jaime had hung up. He felt like he couldn’t breathe evenly as he waited to see if Jaime had hung up so he could text something.

Thank you. For everything you said. It did help to hear your voice. I had a hard time making myself hang up so I could tell you that.

Call me whenever you want
, Sean answered.

Sean knew it might be pathetic that he was willing to sit by the phone like that, but he could make an exception for the circumstances.

I’m sorry I can’t come back yet. I know I promised you I’d make New Year’s Eve.

Sean could admit to himself that his heart clenched, and a part of him that he wasn’t proud of wanted to demand Jaime come back like he promised.

It’s okay. The girl Travis was trying to date definitely dropped him, so it’s better if I hang out with him. I miss you, but it’s okay.

It was a full minute before Jaime answered. Sean was starting to worry someone had heard him.

I miss you too. I should sleep and you should get some sleep. I’ll text when I can.

Sean agreed, even if he didn’t want to. It was late, and Jaime probably couldn’t sleep late if they were making him sleep in the living room, and now that he’d gotten off the phone, he could feel how exhausted he was. He stumbled to Travis’s door and leaned against it.

“I’m going to sleep,” he called through the door.

He heard movement and stood up in time not to fall over when the door opened.

“You okay?” Travis asked.

“Not really,” Sean admitted. “I told him I’d do whatever he wanted and I’d give him as much time as he needed, and I think maybe it helped.”

“Do you not mean it?”

“I do. I want to do whatever helps him,” Sean said. “But I also really just want him to come home. I want to hear his voice so I can figure out how he’s really feeling, because he still didn’t really tell me. I know why I can’t, but I still just want to put him on a plane and bring him home because I’m selfish, and I want him here.”

He wasn’t surprised when Travis stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. He’d let the tears he’d been holding in slip out because he was too tired to care anymore. Despite Alana’s jokes about them, they’d never really had a physical friendship, but when he cried, it was like Travis didn’t know what else to do. So he’d hold Sean and it helped, except this time what Sean really wanted was to have Jaime’s arms around him instead. They stood still for a few seconds until Sean managed to take a deep breath and pull away.

“Thanks.” Sean wiped his hand over his face. “I’m just going to brush my teeth and crash.”

Travis nodded and let him walk away. When he got out of the bathroom a few minutes later, Travis was back in his room, but his door was still open and Sean waved away his concerned look as he passed by. Alana was fast asleep, but the weight next to him was enough of a comfort that he could let his exhaustion pull him into sleep.

Chapter 18

S
EAN
WOKE
to an empty bed. There was enough light in the window that it was obvious Travis had decided to let him sleep in. He picked his phone up before he even bothered to sit up, but there was only an e-mail from Elizabeth asking how he was doing. He’d have to remember to e-mail her back after he felt like he could function.